Bill KNOTT

PICTURE

Meadow of matchsticks,
soon to be rekindled
by Spring the incendiary.

The exact flame of your blossoms
will ignite the passions
happily sapped by time--

Dripdrop their excess went
and now miners' hats
light up like love before

your vein, the frame of which
is there to depict the drift,
the waste when I painted

all the review copies
they sent me. But those books
open to polar pages where you

and I weigh the ends of this
teeter totem down, you
at the head and nadir me;

where postmortem is
the aura of self-portrait,
its other half regained at last.

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